BEAUMONT, Texas — Southeast Texas now has two state of the art life-saving machines.
Baptist Hospital has two extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines.
ECMO is a life support system used when a person has a critical illness or organ failure. It gives the heart and lungs a break when they need to heal.
It's reserved for extremely sick patients and can potentially help save their lives.
ECMO machines pump blood outside of the body and into a heart lung machine that provides oxygen to the blood. It then sends oxygen filled blood back to the tissues in the body. This gives the patient's lungs a rest and a chance to heal.
"So when their survival rate without ECMO is less than 10% is when we offer this process. Or this artificial heart and lung. And then with artificial heart and lung we're looking at 50 to 70% survival rate, so at least we're giving the patients a chance to fight," said the Director of Intensive Care at Baptist Hospital, Juan Iribarren.
The nearest hospital that has this machine is in Houston, meaning that patients who needed this machine had to make the trip.
"We won't have to send these patients most of the times to Houston, which is a very very hard thing to do. Especially because patients may not survive the transportation," said Iribarren.
Baptist Hospital will be able to serve patients in Southeast Texas and West Louisiana.
"We're happy to be a part of that 1% in the nation that offers this program. We are now a center of referral for this entire Southeast Texas area and West Louisiana. So we are essentially elevating the care in this area. And I think the patients in population here, the community deserves that," said Iribarren.
The hospital has already put the machines to good use. The first patient to use this machine had COVID and survived.